Missoula Marathon
Missoula, Montana
Sunday, July 15, 2007

I race walked the Missoula Marathon in Missoula, Montana on Sunday, July 15, 2007. Missoula has been hot with record setting afternoon highs in 100’s. Fortunately in the early mornings it is much cooler.
The third leg of my flight which went from Salt Lake City to Missoula had Emil Pawlik sitting next to me. As we chatted I found out that he is a very famous Masters Decathlon Athlete. He told me that he has set national records in three different age groups and has competed all over the world. I checked out this information after I got home and found that he set the national USATF 55-59 age group record on 3/29/1996 with 4044 points, the 60-64 age group record on 3/26/1999 with 4145 points, and the 65-69 age group record on 3/11/2005 with 4454. He is currently 68, has a knee injury, but is going to Montana to visit his daughter and beginning to prepare for the world championships. His specialty is the high jump and he talked about his friends, Valeriy Brumel and John Thomas.
My marathon was scheduled to start at 6:30 AM; however, when the bus got me at the start line at 5:25 AM, they were starting a group of about 35 who were going to take more than 5 hours. I asked if I could also start then and they said I could. I am lucky as this meant that the temperature which was around 66 degrees at 5:30 climbed to around 84 degrees by the time I finished near 10:45 instead of 93 degrees by the time I would have finished near 11:45 (or warmer and later). By 2:00 PM the temperature reached 103 degrees.
This was a first year race and was very well organized with plenty of volunteers and water/energy drink stations. The course was very flat except for one very steep half mile hill near mile 14. They did not use chip timing and the results still are not posted on their web site, so I am not sure how the awards went for age groups. I expect they are having difficulty because of letting people start early.
On the Saturday before the race I toured the National Bison Reserve and old Fort Missoula. I will post pictures in the following postings.